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VOL. XI. MARCH, 1891. No. 131.

CONTENTS.

LIFE, LETTERS, AND FRIENDSHIPS OF RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. Edward Gilpin Johnson

339

THE MAKERS OF AMERICA.

Andrew C. Mc

ERDMANN'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. William M. Salter

THE CLOSING YEARS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. William Eliot Furness

342

344

MODERN USES OF ELECTRICITY. H. S. Carhart 348 FRANCIS DANA HEMENWAY. Minerva B. Norton 350 BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 351

Mr. Wemyss Reid's biography of the first Lord Houghton is unusually rich in elements of general interest; and readers who know or care least about Monckton Milnes himself will be abundantly entertained by the varied mass

of general information, gossip, and correspond ence which enter into the story of his life. Lord Houghton was for half a century a conspicuous figure in European society, achieving a unique three-fold distinction as a man of letters, of affairs, and, in the higher sense, of fashion; and was the intimate friend and correspondent of the most eminent men and women of his day. He knew Wordsworth, Landor, and Sidney Smith; was the friend, trusted and * LIFE, LETTERS, AND FRIENDSHIPS OF RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, First Lord Houghton. By T. Wemyss Reid. With Introduction by Richard Henry Stoddard. In two volWith two Portraits. New York: Cassell Publishing Company.

umes.

"Great as the interest of such friendships must be, they did not suffice to absorb his affections. The richest outpourings of his heart were in many cases reserved for men of whom the world knew little or nothing."

It is as the friend of great men, rather than as the great man, that Milnes will, broadly speaking, be known to those who come after him a fact sufficiently evident in the general trend and composition of the present work. Lord Houghton was handicapped in the race for that success which wins enduring fame by those qualities which dazzled and attracted his contemporaries; the brilliant versatility of talent and catholicity of taste and sympathy which gained him ephemeral distinction deterred him from pursuing consistently a career of politics or of letters-in either of which he might, perhaps, have attained greatness. In the words of Aubrey De Vere

"He had not much of solid ambition, nor did he value social distinction as much as intellectual excitement and ceaseless novelty."

One must not, however, while emphasizing achievements, depreciate the latter unduly. His the disparity between Milnes's ability and his prose writing charmed his generation and will long be read by lovers of good English; and his poetry, chaste to a degree and enriched with a vein of finely-suggestive reflection, held its own undimmed in the light of Tennyson's genius. Landor held strongly to the opinion that Milnes was ahead of all his living contemporaries as a poet; in Crabbe Robinson's Diary (1838)-alluding to a breakfast at which Landor was present-we read:

"A great deal of rattling on the part of Landor, who maintained Blake to be the greatest of poets, and that Milnes is the greatest poet now living in England.”

Milnes does not seem to have been taken so seriously by Wordsworth, who, on learning that the young man intended going to the masked ball at Buckingham Palace in the character of Chaucer, observed, "If Richard Milnes goes to the Queen's ball in the character of Chaucer, it only remains for me to go to it in that of Richard Milnes." Undoubtedly, certain pieces by Milnes will find a place in every anthology of English verse.

of

Lord Houghton's political career, though in the main disappointing to himself and his friends, was not without brilliant episodes, and was certainly marked by one notable and unselfish triumph-his share in the establishment of reformatories for children who had been born, or driven by force of circumstances, into the criminal classes. Milnes's social reputation and his literary successes stood in the way his political advancement-especially as it happened to be Sir Robert Peel to whom he looked for office. Sir Robert was what is known as "an eminently practical man"-synonymous, too often, with "an eminently hard-headed, narrow-minded, short-sighted man "-and was quite unable to see in the man of letters and the man of society a possible man of affairs.

In his social career Lord Houghton achieved an almost unique distinction; and it was for such a career that his temperament peculiarly fitted him. We believe that we do no injustice to his memory when we say that few men have tested more fully the worth of that genial philosophy which takes large and grateful account of the good things of the hour, "leaving the rest to the Gods." "He warmed both hands before the fire of life," said his friend Landor; and we confess we see no reason for treating this as an admission to be offset by a formal enumeration of specific virtues as if an acceptance of the blessings of this life implied an enfeebled claim upon those of the next. Perhaps Mr. Wemyss Reid feels that the spirit of Macaulay's Puritans, who forbade bull-baiting "not because it gave pain to the bull, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators," still lies heavy upon his countrymen. Lord Houghton's fondness for the sunshine of life was no mere selfish epicureanism; and the consciousness that there were multitudes beyond the reach of the pleasant beams was for him a source of constant disquietude and of good works. There are, no doubt, persons who, though callous of temperament and emotionally incapable of realizing the sufferings of others, are extremely beneficent from a sense of duty.

Lord Houghton was not of this class; still less was his beneficence of the thrifty sort that regards charity as an investment—as a banking of treasure, away from moth and rust, and at a high rate of interest. Florence Nightingale, his warm friend and co-laborer in the field of disinterested good works, records a story of him that dwarfs formal panegyric:

"His brilliancy and talents in tongue or pen-whether political, social, or literary-were inspired chiefly by goodwill towards man; but he had the same voice and manners for the dirty brat as he had for a duchess, the same desire to give pleasure and good for both were his wits and his kindness. Once, at Redhill (the Reformatory), where we were with a party, and the chiefs were explaining to us the system in the court-yard, a mean, stunted, villainous-looking little fellow crept across the yard (quite out of order, and by himself), and stole a dirty paw into Mr. Milnes's hand. Not a word passed; the boy stayed quite quiet and contented if he could but touch his benefactor who had placed him there. He was evidently not only his benefactor,

but his friend."

We e are glad that Miss Nightingale has preserved this scene for us. The picture of the fortunate Lord Houghton, the poet, wit, and scholar, the intimate of kings and statesmen, standing hand-in-hand with the desolate little waif in the Redhill prison-yard, is a singularly engaging one, and touches problems more intricate than the character of an individual.

Naturally, Mr. Reid dwells upon Lord Houghton's more solid qualities rather than upon those eccentricities which went at least as far as his merits in drawing upon him so large a share of public notice. A number of amusing anecdotes, however, are given illustrative of the side of his character best known to the world at large. Upon his entry, in 1836, into London society, it became Milnes's ambition to emulate the poet Rogers, whose "literary breakfasts" were a well-known London institution, in the role of a host at whose table men of ability could meet on equal terms, irrespective of creed, party, or social standing. Milnes seems to have gone quite beyond his prototype, and the result of the universality of his invitations was sometimes rather startling. It is related that one day at his table someone asked if Courvoisier, the notorious murderer, had been hanged that morning; when his sister immediately responded, "I hope so, or Richard will have him at his breakfast party next Thursday." Carlyle used to say that if Christ was again on earth Milnes would ask him to breakfast, and the clubs would all be talking of the good things Christ had said. Milnes was fond of mystifying his friends

no difficult task, certainly, with his English ones with unexpected and paradoxical marks. When, for instance, he was elevated to the Peerage, in 1863, a friend greeted him under his new title and solemnly asked him how it felt to be a lord.

"Milnes's eyes twinkled with irrepressible humor, as he answered, I never knew until to-day how immeasurable is the gulf which divides the humblest member of the Peerage from the most exalted commoner in England.'"

Lord Tennyson, who evidently knew his countrymen, warned our author against printing this; for, said he, "Every fool will think that Milnes meant it."

The circle of Milnes's friendships embraced many of the most illustrious men and women of his day; and with nearly all these people his relations were so confidential as to lend special value to the letters freely interspersed throughout the text of the present work. Among his correspondents may be mentioned Guizot, Gladstone, Tennyson, Browning, Wordsworth, Landor, Matthew Arnold, Thackeray, Emerson, Carlyle, Thiers, Lamartine, and Charles Sumner. Carlyle's letters are very amusing

and characteristic, and we shall allow ourselves a few extracts from one written to his wife

from Fryston, the country-seat of Lord Houghton's father, where the Sage of Chelsea was then a guest.

“Richard, I find, lays himself out while in this quarter to do hospitalities, and of course to collect notabilities about him and play them off one against the other. I am his trump card at present. These last two nights he has brought a trio of barristers to dine-producing champagne, etc. Plate of Marry silver, four or five embroidered lackeys, and the rest of it, are the order of all days. Our first trio consisted of Sir Francis Doyle, another elderly wigsman (name forgotten), and little Roebuck! He is practising as advocate now, that little Roebuck, as lean, acrid, contentious, and loquacious as ever. He flew at me, do what I would, some three or four times like a kind of cockatrice-had to be swept back again; far more to the general entertainment than to mine. Last night our trio was admitted to be a kind of failure; three greater blockheads the leelang nicht ye wadna find in Christendee. Richard had

to exert himself; but he is really dexterous, the villain. He pricks into you with questions, with remarks, with all kinds of fly tackle to make you bite-does generally contrive to get you into some sort of speech. Richard's sister is also here. I think she is decidedly worth something. About the height of Richard, which makes a respectable stature for a gown, the same face as he, but translated into the female cut, and surmounted with lace and braided hair; of a satirical, witty turn, not wanting in affability, but rather wanting in the art of speech; above all, rather afraid of The mother is a very good woman, with

me.

a mild, high-sailing way, to which in old times her figure and beauty must have corresponded well. The old

gentleman likes me better daily, since he finds I wont bite. He has flashes of wit, of intelligence, and almost originality. At all events, he wants not flashes of silence."

In another letter, Carlyle gives his opinion of the Corn Laws-and of a dull sermon :

"A real Squire's bane I define these laws to be; sweet to the tooth of Squire, but rapidly accelerating all Squires, as if they needed acceleration, in their course downward. Sir Peel is a great man; can bribe, coerce, palaver, gain a majority of seventy; but Sir Peel cannot make water run permanently upwards, or an English nation walk on the crown of their heads. Did I ever tell you how near I was bursting into absolute tears over your old fat-sided parson at Fryston that day? It is literally a kind of fact. The droning hollowness of the poor old man, droning as out of ages of old eternities things unspeakable into things unhearable, empty as the braying of an ass, was infinitely pathetic in that mood of mine."

The following is from one of Milnes's own

ing our Civil War Milnes ranged himself on We must not omit mentioning here that dur

the side of the friends of the North, with an earnestness not inferior to that of Mr. Bright and Mr. W. E. Forster a fact that goes far in explaining the extraordinary warmth of his reception in America in 1874.

Among the many tributes to Milnes, we find the following from the poet Heine. It is from a letter written to Lady Duff Gordon :

"Yes, I do not know what possessed me to dislike the English, and to be so spiteful towards them, but it really was only petulance. I never hated them. I was only once in England, but knew no one, and found London very dreary, and the people in the streets odious. But England has revenged herself well; she has sent me most excellent friends-thyself and Milnes-that good Milnes and others."

But it is impossible here to give the reader a fair idea of the richness and variety of matter of these two handsome volumes; and it only remains to add a word as to the editing. Those who have read Mr. Wemyss Reid's Life of W. E. Forster need not be reminded that he brings exceptional qualifications to a task of this kind—not the least of which is a thorough understanding of the true scope and purpose of biography. Every page of the work in hand testifies to the writer's aim to set clearly before the reader the real Monckton Milnes-rather